Father of a President
Peter's best friend was William Randolph of Tuckahoe, one of his wife's kin. And like all of the ambitious young men of the time, they both were doing everything in their power to acquire the King's American land as fast as they could. Both Peter and William had choice plots of acreage on the Rivanna River that they wanted. A strain on their friendship came when Peter went to file his claim on the thousand acres that he desired. It was then that he discovered that his friend William Randolph had filed on 2,400 acres just two days earlier. Randolph's vast claim included 400 acres that Peter especially had wanted.
When Randolph leaned what he had mistakenly done he at once sold the four hundred acres to his friend Peter. The price of the land sold to Jefferson, as it can still be verified in the 1736 deed, was "Henry Weatherbourne's biggest bowl of arrack punch." There is little doubt that the seller shared the price of the land with his friend, and probably a few others.
Peter Jefferson built a house on the site and named his plantation Shadwell, after the parish in London where his wife had been baptized. It was there, at Shadwell, on April 13, 1743, That Peter Jefferson's eldest son Thomas was born; a son that would become the third president of a very young United States of America.
Peter Jefferson died August 17, 1757, leaving a widow, who lived till 1776, six daughters and two sons. Thomas, at the age of fourteen, was the elder of the two sons. Peter also left sixty slaves of which he forbid his overseers to use the whip upon.
Recommended Reading:
Source:
Brodie, Fawn M. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1974.
